Sound Ventures has announced the close of a nearly $240 million AI fund as well as investments in startups including ChatGPT developer OpenAI. Photo Credit: Andrew Neel
Beverly Hills-headquartered VC Sound Ventures has formally announced an approximately $240 million AI fund and revealed investments in OpenAI, Anthropic, and StabilityAI.
Eight-year-old Sound Ventures, which counts as partners actor Ashton Kutcher, former iHeartMedia exec Effie Epstein, and Maverick Management founder Guy Oseary, just recently detailed its nearly quarter-billion-dollar foray into AI. Moving forward, the firm intends to back “category-defining artificial intelligence businesses,” according to higher-ups, who also emphasized their vision for the technology’s significant long-term role in entertainment and beyond.
“We anticipate that AI is going to play an impactful role in everything we do – including entertainment, an industry we know well,” Oseary indicated in a statement. “The companies we are backing will be at the forefront of this powerful innovation, and Sound Ventures is excited to bring our distinct experiences and connectivity to responsibly support these AI foundational platforms.”
As mentioned, Sound Ventures likewise took the opportunity to relay that it had backed ChatGPT creator OpenAI, which received a reported $10 billion in funding from Microsoft towards 2023’s beginning and has pulled in an additional $300 million from VCs at a roughly $29 billion valuation, according to TechCrunch.
Meanwhile, the lesser-known Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI execs and bills itself as “an AI research company that builds reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.” The startup reportedly scored a $300 million to $400 million investment from Google in February and rolled out an artificial intelligence chatbot called Claude in March.
Finally, StabilityAI has developed image generator Stable Diffusion as well as music generator Dance Diffusion, to name some, and in October of 2022 raised $101 million from backers including Lightspeed Venture Partners.
In comments of his own, Kutcher highlighted his view of AI’s impact and importance, communicating: “We believe this is potentially the most significant technology we will experience since the advent of the internet. The foundation model layer companies are defining the category, and, in our view, they have the power to transform businesses and everyday life. That is a conversation we want to be in.”
Though AI is still in its infancy, evidence suggests that the rapidly evolving technology is already transforming both business and everyday life – including in the music industry, where a steady stream of artificial intelligence works are racking up millions upon millions of plays. And with billions of dollars continuing to pour into the space, which is now producing entire videos, it goes without saying that the approaching months and years appear poised to deliver substantial AI improvements and innovations.